Heart failure, which is also called congestive heart failure (CHF) or congestive cardiac failure (CCF), is a condition that can result from any structural or functional cardiac disorder that impairs pumping blood with the heart, or filling the heart with blood. Heart failure is often undiagnosed. This is due, in part, to a shortage of recognized relationships between one or more symptoms. Practitioners often are not permitted to perform studies intended to detect heart failure without a precursor indication from the patient that heart failure testing is merited. An additional aspect of the problem is that there are a limited number of useful indicators available that can communicate to a practitioner that heart failure may be present, and that further measurements should be performed.
Additionally, there is a shortage of tools to monitor the success of heart failure treatments. Because there is a shortage of diagnostics which demonstrate actual or potential heart failure, the efficacy of ongoing treatment is not always understood.